The Cranberry Farming Shrink

Cranberry Farming Psychotherapist's Perspective

By Hal Brown. LICSW

Introduction
added 6/24/00

I wrote this article several years ago in response to criticism that I was out of bounds being so candid about my farming mistakes to the Internet world (such as it was, since only about 100 readers logged onto the web site a month before it became Cranberry Stressline). Frankly, I felt defensive because one of my core beliefs, in being truthful about myself even when it hurts, was being attacked.

I had articles published in local mental health magazines as long ago as 1972, and was a regular columnist in a police magazine with a circulation of 6,000 from 1994-1997. I began the web site Police Stressline in 1997. That web site, addressing the often touchy topic of police stress, always "told it like it was." It has since become the number one police stress web site, with its articles republished in numerous police magazines. However, only since Cranberry Stressline began to gain readership did I begin to come under fire for reporting on facts, and expressing opinions.

Although some are loath to admit it, I have become a self-educated journalist. I have made mistakes, and learned along the way. From the start, and to this date, I have been criticized for being "too truthful." Good journalists and psychotherapists often meet resistance when they seek to reveal the truth, either to the general public or to an individual. But for many, good journalism is dangerous. Case in point, here's a recent posting from the Cranberry Stressline Forum:

A news magazine gets lots of letters from cranberry growers regarding the state of the industry. They go to people's farms and start interviewing them. They go to Ocean Spray, Northland, etc. and request interviews regarding the situation. While they are on our farms, they notice fertilizing going on, they see a farmer using chemicals to kill weeds, they notice a stream running through the farm. Hmmm... maybe there's a better story here. They contact some environmental groups who are more than willing to go on camera and tell about how horrible fertilizer and chemicals are, and how they are going straight from our bogs and into the ground water and streams. This pollutes the water and causes cancer. Now that's a story! It airs on national television. Suddenly, people are scared to eat cranberries because they cause cancer. Now, some lawyer jumps on this and starts a class action suit against the cranberry industry for endangering the public. The cranberry industry goes to hell and most of us go out of business.

If indeed cranberries did cause cancer, like tobacco, I would hope that it would be reported. I sympathize with tobacco farmers, but believe they should not be growing this dangerous crop. Without wearing out my soapbox, let me just ask where this country would be today without the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein? (For diehard Republicans, Bob Woodward is now reporting on Al Gore's alleged campaign finance wrong-doing.)

In the article below, what applies to my values and convictions as a psychotherapist also applies to me as a journalist.

I've been a rural psychotherapist for thirty years, and a farmer for only ten. By cranberry grower's standards, I'm a babe in the bogs. I don't know much about growing cranberries. But I know about interpersonal dynamics, handling stress, the salutary effects of being able to take things in stride, and not taking yourself so seriously you can't laugh at your mistakes. I also know what happens to self-esteem when people define who they are exclusively by what they do for a living.

No matter what happens, as long as nobody is injured, a mistake is just that, a mistake. An accident is, by definition an accident. Nothing to get bent out of shape over. Only something to learn from. Nothing to hide or be ashamed of. In the cranberry business too many growers keep their mistakes, accidents, and untoward events to themselves, and don't realize that many other growers have made the same errors and had the same experiences.

I won't be a party to such duplicity. I am, if not the only, one of a very few cranberry growing shrinks. My code of ethics, both professional and personal, won't allow me to be silent when I observe my farming friends and associates thinking and acting in ways that are detrimental to their psychological well-being.

We sent a truck load of cranberries to Ocean Spray 36 hours too early and it had to return. We made a paper mistake. We wrote down the wrong time of the last herbicide application on this particular bog. This was then submitted to Ocean Spray. Called a "pre-harvest interval" there is a specified time you must allow between the application and the harvest for each chemical used in cranberry production. We had more than enough time, but what went in on paper is what we have to live with. This is done to protect the consumer. Unfortunately this wasn't discovered until the truck was already at the receiving plant, and had to be sent back. To assure safety and quality the cranberries had to be dumped back into the bog where they will soak for another two days before they are reloaded again.

No one likes the idea of reversing the harvest process. But it isn't the end of the of the world. Here you see the truck being unloaded, a simple process that takes all of ten minutes with a high pressure hose. In a couple of days we'll reload the cranberries and all we'll be out is a few dollars and some wasted time. These things happen.

So, should this be kept a secret? A deep dark family business secret? I'm a psychotherapist, and for better or worse, a chronicler of family cranberry farming on the Internet. I can't separate these two roles, these two identities. Farmers may be notorious benders of truth and tellers of tales; but as a psychotherapist I am obligated to tell it like it is. There's no sense attempting to produce a web site that tells all about cranberry growing, and cranberry farmers, and pretend I'm not a psychotherapist as well.

If I have anything to offer other cranberry growers, it isn't helpful hints on how to back-up vehicles (having gone into the ditch myself), fix broken machines, identify pest infestations or time chemical sprays. I'm lucky I can get all our motors started on frost nights. But three decades of clinical experience as a psychotherapist, running a rural community mental health center, dealing with every human problem and frailty, does give me some insight into the people part of cranberry farming.

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